JFK Memories: It's something that all of us who were there will always remember'

By
Vince Sullivan, Delaware County Daily Times

Thursday, November 21, 2013

MIDDLETOWN — Bill Zimmer was a first-year graduate student at Temple University studying for an economics exam.

Harry Yeager was at home with his wife having new cabinets installed.

Len Bachman was at his office in Lansdowne working for Bell Telephone.

Woodie Benson was working at the Atlantic Oil Refinery, preparing for a business trip.

Julie Haas was shopping with her young son near their Washington, D.C., home.

Elva South was just sitting down to dinner in an apartment in Germany.

Donna Mann was in class at her junior high school.

Stanley Mann was working at an upstate New York cancer research hospital.

These eight residents of Lima Estates, an ACTS retirement community in Middletown, shared their stories of where they were and what they were doing on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, 50 years ago today. While they were all in different places at the time the fatal shots rang out, they all had similar feelings in the aftermath of Kennedy’s death.

Zimmer, 72, was in his room listening to music on the radio, studying for an economics exam when a news bulletin broke in with the first confused reports from Dallas. A few more bulletins came over the radio, eventually announcing that Kennedy was dead.

“Eventually the music just stopped and it was broadcast after broadcast,” Zimmer said. “In the next room there was a television, but I never got up to go see it on TV. You just couldn’t move.”

Yeager, 92, was home from work to oversee the installation of new kitchen cabinets at his home when a neighbor come over to break the news. Yeager, his wife and the cabinet maker stood glued to the television.

“The cabinet man was quite shocked about it and asked if he could finish up for the day to go home and be with his wife,” Yeager said. “It was a shock. ... We kind of didn’t want to believe it.”

Bachman, 86, was a district traffic manager for Bell Telephone at an office on Baltimore Avenue in Lansdowne.

“I was in my office when I got word,” he said. After hearing the news, he took the short walk to Bell’s equipment facility nearby on Lansdowne Avenue.

“The switchboard with all of the operators was just completely lit up,” he said. Bachman added that the machinery in the facility was so overloaded that entire building was shaking.

Benson, 93, was in an office at the Atlantic Oil Refinery when news of the shooting began trickling in.

“We got the word in increments,” Benson said. “Frankly, work really stopped.” People began going home as the afternoon moved toward evening.

“This was a shock to the nation,” Benson recalled. “Those of us who are old enough will always remember.

Haas, 86, was shopping with her 3-year-old son, who was trying on a Tom ‘N’ Jerry bathrobe.

“A worker at the store who was waiting on us came out and her face was just stricken,” Haas said. Her husband worked for Boeing in Washington, D.C., and was able to confirm to her that the president had died.

South, 83, was living in Germany with her husband, who worked as a teacher for the Department of Defense. The time difference meant that as the news of the assassination broke at about 1 p.m. on the East Coast, South was just sitting down to dinner in her apartment.

“The whole stairwell of the apartment building just broke out,” South said, adding that Armed Forces Network radio broadcasts were their source of news reports. The people living in the building were all Americans.

“We were just a little island in Germany at the time,” South said. “We were kind of a family.”

Donna Mann, 63, was a student in junior high school when the announcement of Kennedy’s death came over the loudspeakers. She said that her teacher had been overly emotional about other things that were trivial in comparison to the death of a president.

“The announcement came over the loudspeaker and she just lost it,” Donna said. “It kind of made it worse to see her so out of control.” The teacher told the students to sit quietly and read while waiting for buses to arrive for their ride home.

“At that moment most of us didn’t understand the weight of it until we got home and saw our parents,” she said.

Stanley Mann, 81, was at work at a cancer research hospital in upstate New York when the news arrived.

“When the news came through, everything ground to a halt,” Stanley Mann said. Non-essential workers were sent home.

“As an American, no matter where you were, it hit us all the same way ...,” he said. “More than shock, there was fear. Was it a conspiracy? If it was, was it a foreign conspiracy? Would it lead to a war, and if it did would it lead to a nuclear holocaust?”

The nation paid rapt attention to wall-to-wall news coverage of the assassination, its implications and aftermath. On Sunday morning, millions watched as Lee Harvey Oswald, arrested for the killing of Kennedy and a Dallas police officer, was himself murdered live on television.

See LIMA: Page 6“It was really the coming of age of television,” Bachman said of the constant news reports in the weekend following the assassination. Adding to the shock and grief of the killing was Kennedy’s mass appeal to all Americans.

“Washington changed,” Haas said. “It changed the next day. There was this family that was full of life and everything. The next day it was gone.”

“He was a young fella and he was the first president we really saw a lot of on television,” Benson said. “You couldn’t help but like him.”

With Friday’s assassination and the killing of Oswald on Sunday, Monday brought some closure to the chaotic events of the weekend as Kennedy was laid to rest. Haas was there to watch the procession of a riderless horse pulling a gun carriage with Kennedy’s flag-draped casket, empty boots reversed in the stirrups.

“There must have been a million people there and you could have heard a pin drop. ... You could hear the horse’s hooves clop,” Haas said of the procession through Washington. Others watched the ceremony on television as the president’s young son, dubbed John John, gave a salute as his slain father’s body passed by.

“It was very moving,” said Benson.

“I don’t think there were many eyes that weren’t wet,” Stanley Mann said.

After that, things began to return to normal. People returned to work. Children went back to school. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, assumed office and the government began operating again.

“My test was originally scheduled for the day of the funeral, but it got pushed back a week,” Zimmer said.

“You had to go back to work,” Yeager said.

“Life goes on,” Bachman said.Even 50 years later, the images and feelings associated with that dark day stay with the people who lived through it.

“It’s something that all of us who were there will always remember,” said Stanley Mann.